Parsing the Microsoft - EU Interoperability Commitment

"Or that it wishes to have more implied control over the next ISO version, since it has no obligation to implement it under the proposed settlement? At the moment, I can't think of a third explanation, given that the EC apparently thought the question of OOXML support was important enough to require specific language covering OOXML support in the near term.

"Turning to the second question: how strong is the commitment to implement ODF, and why should there be specific "outs" at all? Irony aside (in light of the first approval round in ISO of OOXML), the game-playing condition is superficially not unreasonable, but who would make the judgment call over how much game-playing is too much, especially given that a certain level of game playing is rampant across so many strategic standard setting initiatives to begin with. And, for the largest software company in the world, why should difficulty enter into the equation? Note also that the next version of ODF could be more difficult to implement not only because ODF had changed, but because Office had changed as well."

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